


she's the rebel, the daughter

by meritmut



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: 30-Day Fic Meme, F/F, originally
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut





	1. snowflake

Sunlight glimmered on the undisturbed surface of the lake, and Lyanna moved toward it without thinking. She reached out a hand as if to snare the soft light between her fingers, catch it before the silver clouds reclaimed it for themselves, and though for a moment her fair skin was turned to gold her upheld palm remained empty and soon fell back to her side. She watched the sun dance across the water in flickering streaks of wintry flame - fire and ice, it seemed to her, in that instant inseparable from one another. The lake was so transparently clear, so motionless, it was as if the old gods who’d wrought this cold world had looked upon their creation, found themselves in their vanity wanting for a mirror, and so decided to cast one from the perfect stillness of the water. She stood still as a pale weirwood calf-deep in the shallows, trailing her fingers a whisper above the glassy lake until from across the godswood she heard her brothers’ voices drifting between the trees, light and intangible as the children of the forest themselves.

Their laughter split the silence asunder, but in a warm way; a familiar way, and Lyanna threw her head back to the chilly air.

The other girls shied from the godswood, claiming fear for its looming shadows and snowdrifts that could fall from a high branch without warning, but Lyanna loved it – loved the way that the cold gnawed into her bones and made the blood sing in her veins as if it coated them in silver frost just as easily as it did the trees, turned the air in her lungs to a pale mist and made every breath sting. She had known only this one winter, having come into the world on the dying days of the last, but still the solemn words of her House made her shiver in an unnameable excitement when she thought of them. _Winter is coming_. Winter, with its howling snows and the gales that shook the foundations of the northern mountains, and the rare still days of perfect beauty such as today.

Winter, the time of the North, the time of the blue wilderness and the white woods. The warm-blooded men of the South knew nothing of the harsh, cruel joy that came from a winter here, and never would; they thought the Starks gave only warning with their motto, but the northmen knew better. It was more than a portent of the dark days – no, _winter is coming_ meant the time of the greatest challenges they would ever face, the time that would prove their mettle and their courage and their ability to live through the worst that the old lands had to offer. The time that would make each one of them feel that they deserved to live in endless summer, for they had endured the winter.

Lyanna thought little of endurance. She had stayed indoors during the bitterest of the storms as her lady mother had commanded, not even venturing to open the shutters, but on the days when the weather allowed she'd ridden out into the hills with Brandon as if it were high summer. Sometimes she had thought to taste springtime on the air, but again and again the remorseless snows came. Once there had been no reprieve from the weather for almost two months straight. Sequestered in the warmest chambers of the keep, Lyanna had longed for those days to end – and end, eventually, they did.

The air was sweet with the scent of roses from the blossoms packed into her closet, lingering on her skirts. How she loved that perfume, delicate as the snow that fell around her. She had belted her dress up around her waist to keep it dry and the crushed cotton released faint waves of rose with every movement. Lyanna dipped her fingers into the chilly water as her brothers came running through the trees, their blunted blades flashing and dancing. They made sport of warcraft, these sturdy young things who thought nothing of cracked knuckles and bruised shins. They’d banned her from their games after she stole Ben’s bow and quiver and used them to beat the boys from a distance, but she could still cheer them on. She could still arbitrate, and at the end of their jousts whoever won (it was usually Brandon) would pretend to canter forwards and proclaim her the queen of love and beauty, a coronet of twigs she’d woven herself to wear home until the septa squawked and ripped it away, tossed it in the hearth because young ladies don’t wear the hedgerow. 

Nor did they spend all day out in the wood like some vagrant, but out here when the snows drifted high and the ice winds lanced to the bone, Lyanna was untouchable. 

Today she was the lone disturbance on a lake of glass, snowflakes glittering in her dark hair and dripping on her tongue when she stuck it out to catch them. This winter was drawing to a close, but Old Nan swore it had a few storms in it yet and when it came to the shifting tides of the seasons there were none more knowledgeable. Old Nan said a lot of things, and no matter the truth of them Lyanna always listened. She listened when Nan whispered dark tales of fire raining from the sky; a crimson rain swallowing the world; tyrant lords with kingdoms in their grasp and winters that never ended. 

Though she heeded the words of no other soul in the Seven Kingdoms (save Brandon, but that went without saying), Lyanna always listened to Old Nan, listened and heeded the warnings that most others ignored as superstitious nonsense, until one day the searing eyes of a mad king’s son caught her own from the stands of the tourney ground, and neither cry nor remonstration could draw her back from the precipice upon which all of Westeros hung balanced.


	2. formal

“You know if you keep twitching, people will think you’ve ants in your smallclothes.”

Elia swayed from side to side upon the stool, watching her skirts swing with the motion, and smirked. “Better ants than direwolves,” she replied, “Or was that just a rumour?” 

Ashara grinned through a mouthful of pins and rose to her feet, holding out a hand to let Elia step down. The princess’ newly-hemmed gown swirled about her legs as she descended, elegant as a wisp of sea-blue silk under sunshine. 

“A graceless rumour, thank you very much,” replied the maid of Starfall, jewel-bright eyes glimmering with faint amusement. “There are no direwolves so far south.” Elia’s low laughter rippled through the sunlit solar and she nudged Ashara gently with one elbow. “I’m sure the wolf dreams otherwise.” 

“Oh hush, you’ll get them all talking.” Ashara cast a disparaging glance towards the three young women – and one old – perched around the hearth on the other side of the round chamber. It was more habit than anything else now, for Elia’s train to cluster around the fireplace with their needlepoint even on the most clement of days. And lately, as Westeros teetered on the edge of springtime, those days had been occurring with greater frequency until the entire court seemed to bait their breath for the arrival of the Oldtown raven. Spring, and then summer, lay on the horizon sure enough, but for Elia and her southron maidens each day still seemed laced with a chill unique to all the lands north of Dorne. Sometimes she lay awake with an ache in her chest for the red lands she missed, the endless rolling plains that flowed seamlessly into sands that could strip the skin from a man’s flesh when the wind whipped them up. Dorne had no mercy for outsiders, but in Elia’s mind it was a mother’s sort of hostility, towards any that would threaten the children of the sands and the sea. 

Ashara linked her arm with Elia’s and directed them away from the other women, taking them out to the terrace that curved around tower chamber. The sun beat down, the sky fading from the cream of morning to the pale blue of midday and Ashara blinked to clear her vision from the dazzling light. _Aye, summer’s most surely on the way,_ she thought with no small sense of relief. She tired of winter. It made her long for Starfall. She glanced at Elia, who frowned – there had been something almost nervous in the way Ashara look at her, the deep violet of her eyes paling to a near-silver. There, beyond the hearing of the others, Elia took her friend’s hands and looked into those eyes. 

“Tell me, Ash. The truth now.” 

And Ashara did not blink in her delivery of it. She had never lied to Elia, never even thought of it. Why would she? Sometimes it felt as though she were made of glass before those cavernous dark eyes, eyes like stone blades that could see through the best-kept deceptions. Ashara had learned not to waste the effort. It had led to an ease between them, a lack of mistress-handmaid formality she was sure many of the other girls in Elia’s train envied. 

“There is one Stark, I suppose, for whom my heart quickens. No more, though. It is for another that it beats.” She lifted a hand to trace the line of Elia’s dark hair, brushing it back behind her ear. “You know that.” 

Elia sighed – she did know, and it was a hard, helpless sort of knowledge to bear. She reached up to twine her fingers with Ashara’s and squeezed them gently, a tacit reaffirmation of her own affections (because it could never be more than that, not anymore. Not now Rhaegar stood between them like a pillar of white flame enclosing Elia within its warmth even as it left Ashara cold). 

“I know. And I’m sorry for it, my love.” 

“Don’t be.” Ashara’s sunny smile returned, “I’m not. I’ll love where I will, and where I should not, and where I can. It’s no bad thing.” 

“It will be when you’re wed,” pointed out Elia, the hint of a smile on her own features. A slight breeze ruffled her hair beneath the sheer blue veil and made Ashara want to tangle her fingers in its silken bronze curls, take Elia by the jaw and claim those sweet lips one last time. 

That had been what she’d murmured, on the last time they were alone together before Elia’s wedding – one last time. 

“Then I won’t wed.” Ashara grinned, pushing away her thoughts and clasping Elia’s hand between both of hers, as if her words - and her will - were all that was needed to settle the matter.


End file.
